‘Firmly fixed in the Anglican tradition’: the English plainchant revival and the Office of Compline

ABSTRACT The Office of Compline, sung to plainchant melodies adapted to English words, has become ‘firmly fixed in the Anglican tradition’. Yet, in the absence of a service of Compline in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, this office was once perceived as a niche Anglo-Catholic devotion. The present article examines how sung Compline became a staple of the English choral repertoire by examining six settings composed during the ‘English plainchant revival’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the editors’ sources, their methods of adapting Latin chant to English words, and the intended audience for each setting, it shows how successive editions remedied deficiencies perceived in earlier versions in the light of developing scholarship of plainchant and the growing popularity of public services of Compline. While earlier settings relied on medieval and contemporary Catholic sources of Latin chant, the latest imitated the contents of previous English editions, a ‘self-referential’ turn indicating that particular English Compline chants were now seen as part of a standard repertoire. The ongoing popularity of the setting attributed to John Arnold and published by the Plainsong & Medieval Music Society in 1929, issued in a second edition in 2005, shows how music for Compline published around the turn of the twentieth century has now become a musical ‘fixture’ in the English choral repertoire.